Preservation Element

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The purpose of the Preservation Element of the San Francisco General Plan is to provide background information related to historic preservation and to outline a comprehensive set of objectives and policies for the preservation and enhancement of San Francisco's historic resources.

Project Overview

The Planning Department is resuming work on the Preservation Element, which will be a new Element added to the General Plan. It is being created with the belief that the preservation of historic resources is essential to maintaining the character of the City of San Francisco. Historic resources are often affected by development projects, and historic preservation is a strategy for conserving significant elements of the built environment while allowing for growth and change to occur. San Francisco residents and community organizations have a long‐standing commitment to historic preservation as one of the important contributors to the quality of life in San Francisco. Their activities have resulted in preservation emerging as a central value of citizens and government alike, and they have shaped San Francisco's planning and community development policies.

The City's commitment to historic preservation is codified generally in Section 101.1 of the Planning Code, which sets forth eight Priority Policies, including Policy 7:

That landmarks and historic buildings be preserved. The purpose of the Preservation Element of the San Francisco General Plan is to provide background information related to historic preservation and to outline a comprehensive set of objectives and policies for the wpreservation and enhancement of San Francisco's historic resources. Historic resources include buildings, sites, structures, cultural landscapes, districts, and objects that are historically and/or archaeologically significant.

What is the General Plan?

The City's General Plan serves to guide change to ensure that the qualities that make San Francisco unique are preserved and enhanced. The General Plan is based on a creative consensus concerning social, economic, and environmental issues. Adopted by the Planning Commission and approved by the Board of Supervisors, the General Plan serves as a basis for decisions that affect all aspects of our everyday lives from where we live and work to how we move about. It is both a strategic and long term document, broad in scope and specific in nature. It is implemented by decisions that direct the allocation of public resources and that shape private development. In short, the General Plan is the embodiment of the community's vision for the future of San Francisco.

The San Francisco Charter requires "the city planning commission to adopt and maintain including necessary changes therein, a comprehensive, long‐term, general plan for the improvement and future development of the city and county to be known as the master plan….." The San Francisco General Plan contains the following elements: Housing, Commerce and Industry, Recreation and Open Space, Transportation, Urban Design, Environmental Protection, Community Facilities, Community Safety, Arts and Air Quality. San Francisco generally updates their Elements one at a time.

Next Steps

The Department plans to complete a final draft of the Preservation Element in 2014. In order to accomplish this goal, the Draft Preservation Element will be presented to the City Planning Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission for review and comment in several hearings throughout the summer. The Department will also present the document to community stakeholders and gather comments during a rigorous public outreach campaign over the winter. The document will be revised based on this feedback, and a final draft will be prepared for environmental review pursuant to CEQA. At the conclusion of the environmental review, the final policy document will be presented for endorsement by the Historic Preservation Commission and the City Planning Commission, and adoption by the Board of Supervisors in 2015.

Members of the public are not required to provide personal identifying information when they communicate with the Commission or Department. All written or oral communications, including submitted personal contact information, may be made available to the public for inspection and copying upon request and may appear on the Department's website or in other public documents.